2022 Juniper Literary Festival: Mona Awad and Mai Der Vang

Please join us for a reading with prose writer Mona Awad and poet Mai Der Vang. A reception and book signing will follow the reading.

**Mona Awad** is the author of *Bunny*, named a Best Book of 2019 by *TIME*, *Vogue*, and the New York Public Library. It was a finalist for the New England Book Award and a Goodreads Choice Award. It is currently in development for film with Jenni Konner and New Regency Productions. Awad's first novel, *13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl*, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and winner of the Colorado Book Award and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Her writing has appeared in *The New York Times Magazine*, *Vogue*, *TIME*, *McSweeney’s*, *Ploughshares*, and elsewhere. She teaches fiction in the Creative Writing program at Syracuse University. Her new novel, *All’s Well*, has been named a best or most anticipated book of summer by *Entertainment Weekly*, *O Magazine*, Goodreads and many more.

**Mai Der Vang** is the author of *Yellow Rain* (Graywolf Press, 2021), and *Afterland* (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in Poetry, and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She was also the co-editor of the anthology *How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology* (Heyday, 2011). She has been an assistant professor in the Creative Writing MFA Program at Fresno State University since 2019.

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Inaugurated in 2001, the Juniper Literary Festival showcases exciting new writing and explores issues vital to the literary arts, helping to ensure their vitality, plurality, and accessibility. This year, we are excited for a return to an in-person event, and for the opportunity to introduce our newly admitted poets and writers to the vibrant literary community here at UMass and the Pioneer Valley as a whole.

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Readings and receptions are free and open to members of the Five College community with a valid school ID, and the general public with proof of vaccination. Masks are encouraged regardless of vaccination status. Registration for each event is required.

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The 2022 Juniper Literary Festival is a program of the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers’ Juniper Initiative and made possible with generous support from Mass Cultural Council; UMass Arts Council; Office of the Provost; Office of Research and Engagement; Graduate School.College of Humanities & Fine Arts; Department of English; Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; Women of Color Leadership Network; and Arts Extension Service.